Jairus Banaji on FB:
Nehru with the recently knighted Hugh Douglas Cumberbatch, Chairman of
Andrew Yule & Co. (India’s biggest managing agency) and President of
both the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and of Assocham at the time of
Independence. Both chambers of commerce were solidly British-dominated.
It was only as late as 1960 that Assocham pressed its members to start
“Indianizing” their firms, stopping radically short of complete staffing
by Indians.
The photo was taken in January 1948, on the occasion of Nehru’s address
to Assocham.
Here are three short excerpts from Maria Misra’s book, each illustrating
the existence of a racialized capitalism in India:
Until the middle of the war, racial and social barriers were enforced
rigidly, in both clubs and businesses. Even businesses which were
outside the agency house system, such as Price Waterhouse, provided
segregated dining and washing facilities for executives, and one British
assistant who had married an Anglo-Indian woman was forced to take all
his meals separately. Indians also received lower salaries than British
employees at a similar level, and it was common to pay a “local rate”
which was lower than the standard rate. When Sen joined Price Waterhouse
in 1940 the company was quite open about its discriminatory policies and
when he threatened to resign his senior replied, “where will you go?
There will be discrimination in every European office”… In 1942 the
unofficial colour bar in many firms was informally ended, partly as a
result of the Cripps mission and in response to press criticism
…Nevertheless, even after this time many Indians found the atmosphere in
the firms oppressive (Misra, Business, Race, and Politics in British
India, pp.131–2).
Birla himself remarked that “When I was sixteen I started an independent
business of my own as broker, and thus began my association with
Englishmen who were my patrons and clients. During my association with
them I began to see their superiority in business capacity and their
many other virtues. But their racial arrogance could not be concealed. I
was not allowed to use the lift up to their offices, nor their benches
while waiting to see them. I smarted under these insults, and this
created within me a political interest which from 1912 until this day I
have fully maintained” (G. D. Birla, In the Shadow of the Mahatma
(1953), p. xv) (p.135).
There was some relaxation of the segregation within firms, but
traditional practices still remained in some of the more conservative
houses, such as Bird. One Anglo-Indian assistant in Bird in the late
1950s, Pram Prashad, remembered that there were different lunches for
various categories of staff: the Anglo-Indians ate at 12.30 p.m., the
‘promoted’ Indians at 1.00 p.m. and the British at 1.30 p.m. He decided
that his relatively senior position entitled him to ignore these rules
and attend the British lunch, but this was met with complaints. It was
only when he said he would rather starve than join the Anglo-Indians
that he won the battle… Many clubs remained exclusively British until
the late 1950s, even though it had by then become common for British
businessmen to entertain Indians in their own homes; as Prakash Tandon
noted, “it was a case of the club rather than his home being the
Englishman’s castle”. The Calcutta Swimming Club, for example, did not
allow Indian members until the early 1960s (pp.202–3).
Image may contain: 7 people, people standing
<https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10158853597400489&set=a.352264660488&__cft__[0]=AZV22QTYJXXfLzdEQyJf_xZobZ1NHrNAd0UqyVV_ku6ZyDGd47wA0oufNRySuvJGmmvE5tG-m3NZVoh1xvZLrvktIq_Tkrcig_JWHqcNHHwc96IGFMAYX6jsWv7zIMpwVn0lUscxjc1pE9o3iIl0AJWQR1L43OcWESjJ7zmq0yw53w&__tn__=EH-R>
97Rob Wallace, Richard Draytonand95 others
34 Comments
21 Shares
Like
Comment
Share
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#4574): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/4574
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/79062465/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
